International and Bilateral Issues:

Krishna pitches for a Marshall Plan-like initiative for Afghanistan

Warning against the dangers of abandoning Afghanistan, India on Monday exhorted the international community to stay engaged for the long term to eliminate “sanctuaries of terror” and pitched for a Marshall Plan-like initiative to help rebuild the violence-torn country.
The international community needs to stay engaged in Afghanistan for the long term, for both its security and development
With the theme “From Transition to Transformation”, the conference hopes to make progress on two aspects — renewing the international community's commitment to maintaining long-term stability and development of Afghanistan after the troop withdrawal, and to promote the political process of reconciliation between the Afghan government and the militants.
Afghanistan today faces at least four deficits: a security deficit, a governance deficit, a development deficit, and an investment deficit.
To address these deficits, Afghanistan needs time, development assistance, preferential access to world markets, foreign investment and a clear end-state and strategy to make sure that it does not once again plunge into lawlessness, civil war, and externally sponsored extremism and terrorism
The Marshall Plan was devised by the U.S. to provide monetary support to Europe to help rebuild its economies after the end of World War II and to combat the spread of Soviet Communism.

Poor social security, a major concern for workers in Asia-Pacific region

The International Labour Organisation (ILO)'s Asian Decent Work Decade launched in 2006 was aimed at five priority areas of competitiveness, productivity and jobs; labour market governance; youth employment, managing labour migration and local development for poverty reduction.
At discussions during the 15th Asia and the Pacific Regional Meeting (ARPM) on social protection policies on Monday, trade unions pointed to the unacceptable growing inequality in the region and said growth was not inclusive.
The impressive economic growth had not translated into fair economic distribution like good living wages or effective labour market interventions
Another area of concern was the 15 billion Asians living outside their countries and this formed one-fourth of the world's migrant population.
Trade union workers had little protection and in countries like Fiji there were attempts to dismantle unions and harass leaders
In Bahrain too, about 2000 workers were dismissed from their jobs
Apart from Bahrain, only Kuwait and Oman had unions and in other Gulf countries, workers were treated like slaves. In the Arab states, totalitarian regimes ensured workers had no free voice.
70 per cent of the world's working poor lived in the Asia-Pacific region.
There was a need to rebalance the growth model with emphasis on decent well-paid work and jobs with high labour standards. He called for a minimum wage policy.
Ms. Sudha Pillai, Member of India's Planning Commission, said that “you cannot have a one-size-fits-all policy.” Policy coherence was important and there was a need to resolve contradictions in trade, fiscal, monetary and other policies.

U.S. left out of new LatAm's organisation

The U.S. was handed a healthy helping of hemispherical humility last week when, along with Canada, it was excluded from a new organisation representing Latin American and Caribbean States, CELAC.
CELAC, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States
The U.S. response notwithstanding, observers noted that the attendance of some of the major nations in Latin America might imply that the American grip on the region's politics was weakening.
Among the attendees were Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, Cuban President Raúl Castro, Mexican President Felipe Calderón, Argentinian President Cristina Kirchner, and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos.
In particular, the inclusion of Cuba in CELAC reflects some LatAm nations' desire to rebalance the structure and power of regional organisations, as Cuba has long been blacklisted by the U.S. and its membership of the U.S.-dominated OAS was suspended between 1962 and 2009.

It consists of all sovereign countries in the Americas, except for Canada, France, the Netherlands and the United States. British and Danish dependencies in the Americas are also not represented in CELAC.
CELAC is being created to deepen Latin American integration and to reduce the once overwhelming influence of the United States on the politics and economics of Latin America, and is seen as an alternative to the Organization of American States (OAS), the regional body organized largely by Washington in 1948 as a countermeasure to potential Soviet influence in the region.